Glennwood Elementary Moving Back Start Time By 10 Minutes

Decatur Metro| | 9:03 am

Principal Dianna Herron-Watson sent out this letter to parents yesterday…

Dear Glennwood Families,

First, I’d like to thank each of you for such a supportive and positive beginning of school. You have our students coming to school prepared to learn by being rested, on time and with positive learning attitudes! Our staff will continue to practice and develop routines and procedures to ensure we maximize learning time throughout the year.

On Monday, August 20th, Glennwood will make a slight change in our start and end times. This small shift will make a huge impact, ensuring CSD transportation runs more efficiently. Effective on Monday, Glennwood school hours will be changed to 8:00 AM -2:30 PM, a 10 minute adjustment.

We already open our doors and begin serving breakfast at 7:30 AM and this won’t change. Our established morning routines will stay the same. This change in schedule means that students will now move to their classes with staff assistance at 7:50 AM. All students should be in their classrooms ready to learn at 8:00 AM and students not in their classrooms at that time will be considered tardy.

Afternoons will be handled with the same routines. Here is our new bell schedule:

2:30 1st bell Afternoon Announcements

2:32 2nd bell Students move to their dismissal areas

2:34 3rd bell Bus Riders and Van Riders dismissed

Bus Departs GL for Clairemont at 2:40

2:36 4th bell Car Riders dismissed

2:38 5th bell Walkers and GL Animal Crackers dismissed

My expectation is that Glennwood will execute this change smoothly and with clear and open communication.

If you feel you may have logistical transportation issues in the afternoon, please call me personally and we will work it out together. Please feel free to call me with any concerns, as I will continue to make myself available to you on this and other matters of importance to you and our school.

Thank you for your support in making this adjustment to the Glennwood school day. The staff and I look forward to another successful year at Glennwood.

19 Responses to “Glennwood Elementary Moving Back Start Time By 10 Minutes”

The tone of this letter reflects respect and consideration for the families at Glennwood. I like the principal’s offer to be available personally to work out any logistical issues that this change may pose for parents who already have plans in place based on the old schedule. It’s one thing to say “Well, you could have called” retroactively and another to encourage parents to call and work things out.

I’m happy to presume that the Principal is right that this will have a large and positive impact on CSD transportation (although I’d be curious to learn how). But there are probably lots of people who have pre-K students at College Heights and K-3 students at Glennwood and now their dismissal times are exactly the same. (So are their start times, but you have more flexibility in dropping kids off in the morning.).

As an Oakhurst parent in exactly this situation currently, and not wanting to use the car for such a short trip, it’s a little annoying. And Glennwood is further from College Heights than Oakhurst is, and with the RR tracks to cross too. I’m sorry to hear that CSD is making this change.

Hopefully, parents so affected will speak up and hopefully CSD will help out. A parent (or caregivers) cannot be in two places at the same time, no matter how dedicated they are and no matter that it was their own decision to have children! A long winding bus route from ECLC via FAVE is one possible solution–my kids actually have liked meandering bus rides with hub and spoke changes but some 4 year olds might not do so well at the end of the day. Or maybe the ECLC can hold on to walker/riders a bit longer while waiting for northsiders to fly over the tracks. Or maybe CSD needs to expand its Apple portfolio and issue personal i-Helicopters to all ECLC families needing to be in two places at the same time.

I spoke with Principal Watson, and she is aware of and sensitive to this issue. Teachers are available to keep those older brothers and sisters a little while longer while parents are on their way back from the CHECLC.

I am curious as to how the time got changed. Was it a school based decision? A transportation decision? I would love for either CHECLC or Oakhurst to change their dismissal time. As one of many parents with two kids in two places that dismiss at the same time, it is a logistical nightmare. How can we advocate for a time change within other schools? It appears from the above letter that walkers at 4/5 will be dismissed at 238. Could that work at Oakhurst too? I wrote letters to the Board of Ed last spring about the difficulties of parents having to pick up at 2 locations at the same time but obviously there are several K-3 schools and CHECLC that still have the same dismissal time. I want to help this situation change but do not know how. Thoughts?

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I think this issue, handled with grace by Principal Watson, illustrates that we have built in A LOT of complexity into the system. I think also that F.AVE ends at same time no? So we have families that will live a couple of blocks away from elementary schools but DRIVE to pick up their k-3 kids in order to accommodate the other dismissals.

As a system so many of the problems we bump up against … timings, busing seemed to be exacerbated by the complexity of multiple schools. I think it isn’t right if we don’t revisit the issue.

Maybe this is a good time for me to put in a plug for K-6, my favorite configuration. I kept hoping that 4/5 would morph into 4/5/6 but I’d like K-6 even better. I love the ideas of keeping 11 year olds as the young elementary school children that they are. IMHO, the 4/5 is just fine for students but not the Bees Knees. It does mix the elementary kids early before the cliquishness of middle school. But it doesn’t mix them as much as originally envisioned. The downside is the break in the continuity and the fact that families are scattered among more schools. But the deal killer may be the logistics. A model of sequential schools is less flexible than K-5 schools in terms of enrollment, bell schedules, and bus routes. The inequities between elementary schools that drove a lot of the 2003 reconfiguration are long gone and it’s time to look at all the options again. This would be a great survey question and it should involve the whole school community–the parents in K-3 schools, the current 4/5 families, middle and high school families who can speak to how things have played out in terms of cliquishness and academic factors, K-3 teachers who might or might not welcome having older students again, 4/5 teachers who’ve invested in the current model, middle school teachers who receive the 4/5 students, etc.

Gotta say I’m with Sarah on this, although by the time K-5 or K-6 or PreK-5 or whatever is put in place, all my kids will be beyond elementary age. I think the 4-5 made good sense when we had a segregated system and when we only had 150 or so kids per grade. Now we are looking at more that twice that per grade and the 4/5 is becoming unwieldy and impersonal. You can’t do much meaningful mixing of kids over two years when you have 700 or more of them – it’s just too many kids to try to get to meet each other.

Also, we have had three kids in three schools for years now, and there is no way to engage in any meaningful volunteering over three schools unless you completely neglect two of them. So, we end up just helping a little bit at each school but not really engaging in any of them.

Again, I think that the 4/5 model was definitely the right solution when it was put in place, but things are very different now, and what worked several years ago isn’t necessarily going to work under different circumstances. I hope the admins and board are at least willing to look at a reconfigure and see how it might work… maybe it doesn’t work, but it’s certainly worth studying.

I know a bunch of people in CSD who have kids at preK at CHECLC and kids in the elementary schools. These schools start and end at the same time. I know the superintendent’s office realizes this for two reasons 1) I told them myself 2) they aren’t stupid.

You would not believe the contortions people are going through to pick up and drop off kids in two places at the same time.

I just wanted to let you know that I have called and talked with or left messages for ECLC/Glennwood families. We have a plan in place for those families that travel between the two schools. Ms. Kennedy and her staff have been very helpful ensuring I reach the families involved. Thus far we have only two families with a conflict. If other families’ have a change in their situation, we will assist them.